CHAPTER XXX—PEE-WEE IN ACTION
We had some fun in that car while it was on the Sneezenbunker land, and two or three of the fellows said maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to keep it there. That was because it wasn’t so far from Bennett’s. But most of them said it was too near the center of civilization. Gee whiz, that was the first time I ever heard anybody call Main Street, Bridgeboro, the center of civilization.
I said, “I vote for Van Schlessenhoff’s field down near the river.”
Dorry Benton said, “I vote for it, too. But how are we going to get the car down there? That’s the question.”
“We can carry it by a vote,” Hunt Manners said.
“We ought to be able to carry a vote, we’ve got two platforms,” I told him.
Westy said, “Maybe if Mr. Jenson thinks the old trestle isn’t strong enough, still he might be willing to give the car a start if we’re not in it. It isn’t the car he’s thinking about, it’s we fellows. Then we can walk down afterwards.”
Gee whiz, I had never thought of that before. We got kind of used to having our meeting place there on the Sneezenbunker land, and it wasn’t so bad. But now that we got to thinking about the river, good night, we couldn’t get the idea out of our heads.
I said, “Let’s go down to the river and look around and decide how we’ll have things down there, in case we can get the car moved. Maybe we can use the shack where we found the inventor, as a kind of a branch headquarters.”
“Can we catch fish down at that river?” the kid wanted to know.
I told him, “Sure, we can catch canned salmon and fishballs and baseballs and everything. When we go down there we’ll let the fish know we’re coming, we’ll drop them a line.”
So then we all started along the tracks down to the river to kind of look around down there and make plans.
I said, “I hope the field is still down there; I hope Mr. Van Schlessenhoff didn’t put it in the market. Anyway, the river won’t be there.”
“What are you talking about?” Pee-wee yelled..
“I’m talking about whether ice cream should be fried or roasted,” I said.
“You’re crazy,” he shouted.
“I admit it,” I told him. “If I wasn’t I wouldn’t be talking to you.”
“Why won’t the river be there?” he began shouting.
“Because it flows past Bridgeboro,” I told him. “Did you ever hear of a river staying in one place? It takes an east-westerly course and flows into New York Bay. You learn that in the third grade.”
“You’re so smart—where does it rise?” he yelled.
I said, “It rises in the morning, that’s more than you do.”
“What do you mean, in the morning?” he fairly yelled.
“In the northwestern part of the morning,” I said. “That’s why a river has a bed. You rise from your bed, don’t you? Posilutely. That shows your ignorance. I suppose you don’t even know that Great Neck is south of Rubber Neck.”
“You’re crazy!” he yelled. “You think you’re funny, don’t you?”
Gee whiz, that’s my favorite outdoor sport, jollying Pee-wee.
Now that afternoon that we followed the tracks down to the river it wasn’t so easy as it was on that Saturday that Mr. Ellsworth went with us, nor on that Sunday that Westy and I followed the old rails down there, tracking the inventor. The reason for that was that it was a couple of months later, and a couple of months make a big difference with cat-tails, because they grow even faster than cats. Now pretty soon you’ll see how the cat-tails turned out to be tales of adventure—you just wait and see.
That Saturday when we first followed the old tracks across the marsh the cat-tails were not so high and we could see, kind of, how the trestle was built underneath the tracks. The tracks were just high enough to be out of the marsh. And the cat-tails were just a little above the tracks. They grow awful thick, cat-tails do. I know all about them, because we pick them and dry them and sell them for punk sticks to drive mosquitoes away. We get a nickel a bunch for them—no war tax.
Now where the old tracks go across the marsh they are on a wooden trestle part way, and the rest of the way the trestle is sort of solid. Some places you can look down and see the marsh underneath and some places it’s solid so you can’t do that. It’s a kind of a ramshackle thing, because it was never used for passengers, but only to haul lumber and stuff that came up the river in scows and barges.
Even in the beginning I guess the whole thing was just kind of thrown together. Anyway, the old tracks were all half rusted away. The old line was just about good enough to support that old-fashioned car of ours and that’s about all, except in the place where the trestle was solid; I guess it was stronger there. Anyway, the mosquitoes down there are strong enough. Don’t say a word. They carry machine guns, those mosquitoes. But in the field close to the river it’s dandy.
So now I’m going to start another chapter. I bet you think the trestle is going to break down under our car—I bet you’re hoping it will.
Just you wait.